Design Studio 1.4 upgrade and observations

I wanted to share observations with DS 1.4 upgrade (server, client and existing applications).

The blog has the following sections:

1) Upgrading BI Platform add-on

2) Observations executing existing applications

3) Client tool upgrade

4) Creating new applications

1) Upgrading BI Platform add-on

Existing Platform:

• Windows Server 2012
• BI Platform 4.1 SPS 5
• DS 1.3 SPS 1 (Source) –> DS 1.4 SPS 0 (Target)

First step was to download the relevant BI Platform add-on for DS 1.4, see location below (in this case Windows on x64 6bit).

The installation process was as simple as clicking thru the usual prompts and was un-eventful. BIP add-on installation was completed in less than 30 mins.

For clustered environments you will have to install the required BI Platform add-on components on all the nodes.

2) Observations executing existing DS applications published to BI Platform

The next step was to try executing the existing DS applications, in this case the applications are using HANA as the source.  All the existing applications executed fine from BI Launch Pad and BusinessObjects Mobile App (MOBI).

One of the existing application which was based on e-fashion UNX (MS Access 2007) did not work, I checked documentation and MS Access 2007 is not a supported Data Sources for DS 1.4, so really not a DS 1.4 issue (was not a supported datasource for DS 1.3 either but worked there, looks like the check is tighter for UNX datasources in 1.4).

I did notice that the Blue Crystal theme does not have the stripe blue background anymore and uses a plain background. For those who want the old look with the light blue stripes you can use custom CSS to get the stripes back.

Chart with Blue Crystal background in DS 1.4:

Same Chart with Blue Crystal background in DS 1.3:

Custom CSS defined including custom fonts and images loaded fine from the platform without any issues.  Existing dashboards using SDK based add-ons also worked fine with out any issues running from the BI Platform.

3) Client tool Upgrade

Next step was to upgrade Design Studio client tool, in addition to the server upgrade you will also need to upgrade the client tools to be at DS 1.4 to access the new features. If the server is upgraded to DS 1.4 and client is still at 1.3 the following message will be displayed after logging in.

You can find details on downloading DS 1.4 software and client installation from Tammy’s  blog here.

Finding SAP Design Studio 1.4 on SMP

I had 32 bit version (the only one available in DS 1.3) installed and upgraded using the 64 bit installation file and worked fine . Existing applications published to the platform worked fine, I was able to sucessfuly “Open” and “Save” applications after the client upgrade.  While opening an existing application a warning message show below is displayed.  You can ignore this message or do a “Save As” for the existing application.  The existing application will be over written only when you save it.

4) New applications

I created a new DS application based on the SAP standard adhoc template, took me 2 minutes to create the DS app based on the standard template and publish to the Platform!  No manual steps or surprises here.  Some of the new features like Drag and Drop also worked (Check Tammy’s blog here on how to enable drag and drop for the adhoc template).

Overall the upgrade was an easy and un-eventful exercise, existing applications worked fine and some exciting new features!